Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/247

 But this, he adds, is 'no science'; it is the teaching of the old Hebrew prophets. To teach us that or any other lesson history must possess at least some element of truth. Froude's reading of the Lives of the Saints had suggested a curious explanation. 'Two kinds of truth,' he declares, 'form the warp and woof, the coloured web which we call history'; truth of fact, briefly, and truth of poetry. The stories which Bede tells of St. Cuthbert may be incredible; but St. Cuthbert represents a noble ideal, and, moreover, an ideal which men actually tried to realise. Shakespeare is one great example of poetical truth. His cardinal merit is that he accepts the fact, and will not allow his view to be perverted by 'theorising' or by forcing his perceptions of human life and nature to mould themselves upon didactic conclusions. Macbeth would be perfect history 'were it literally true'; and the historian should write history like a Shakespearean drama. The history of some periods may be so written that the actors shall reveal their own characters in their own words; 'mind can be seen matched against mind, and the great passions of the epoch not simply be described as existing, but be exhibited at their white heat in the souls and hearts possessed by